![]() ![]() Mark Taylor, owner and chief pilot of Rocky Mountain Rotors, said his company had airlifted about 40 paying customers over the past two days from Gardiner, including two women who were "very pregnant." The wave of tourists doesn't abate until fall, and June is typically one of Yellowstone's busiest months. More than 4 million visitors were tallied by the park last year. The rains hit just as area hotels filled up in recent weeks with summer tourists. The flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas. Yellowstone's northern roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time. The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs topped a record set in 1918. Heavy rain on top of melting mountain snow pushed the Yellowstone, Stillwater and Clarks Fork rivers to record levels Monday and triggered rock and mudslides, according to the National Weather Service. "Will Yellowstone have a repeat of this in five or even 50 years? Maybe not, but somewhere will have something equivalent or even more extreme," he said. While the flooding hasn't been directly attributed to climate change, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said a warming environment makes extreme weather events more likely than they would have been "without the warming that human activity has caused." Smoke from a fire in the mountains of Flagstaff, Arizona, could be seen in Colorado. The flooding came as the Midwest and East Coast sizzle from a heat wave and other parts of the West burn from an early wildfire season amid a persistent drought that has increased the frequency and intensity of fires. Were going to be cleaning up for a long time."Īt least 200 homes were flooded in Red Lodge and the town of Fromberg. "Yearbooks, pictures, clothes, furniture. "We lost all our belongings in the basement," Hoffman said as the pump removed a steady stream of water into her muddy backyard. ![]() Heidi Hoffman left early Monday to buy a sump pump in Billings, but by the time she returned her basement was full of water. Electricity was restored by Tuesday, but there was still no running water in the affected neighborhood. The water toppled telephone poles, knocked over fences and carved deep fissures in the ground through a neighborhood of hundreds of houses. Residents described a harrowing scene where the water went from a trickle to a torrent over just a few hours. In Red Lodge, a town of 2,100 that's a popular jumping-off point for a scenic route into the Yellowstone high country, a creek running through town jumped its banks and swamped the main thoroughfare, leaving trout swimming in the street a day later under sunny skies. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers. Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone's gateway communities in southern Montana. They seem to be happening more and more frequently," he said. "I've heard this is a 1,000-year event, whatever that means these days. The park could remain closed as long as a week, and northern entrances may not reopen this summer, Superintendent Cam Sholly said. The only visitors left in the massive park straddling three states were a dozen campers still making their way out of the backcountry. The unprecedented flooding drove more than 10,000 visitors out of the nation's oldest national park and damaged hundreds of homes in nearby communities, though remarkably no was reported hurt or killed. "A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events, and it's just not very handy when it happens while we're all here settled on it." ![]() "The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours," said Bill Berg, a commissioner in nearby Park County. The historic floodwaters that raged through Yellowstone this week, tearing out bridges and pouring into nearby homes, pushed a popular fishing river off course - possibly permanently - and may force roadways nearly torn away by torrents of water to be rebuilt in new places. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower Personal Loans for 580 Credit Score or Lower Best Debt Consolidation Loans for Bad Credit ![]()
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